Simon Kernick - A Good day to die

'Poor girl, indeed,' repeated Dr Cheney. 'Her life was an absolute tragedy, made worse by the fact that no one else has ever been charged in connection with any of the crimes against her, and now that her father has also died in mysterious circumstances… You heard about that, didn't you?'

'Yes, I did. I would have called it good riddance if it wasn't for the fact that there are a lot of questions he could answer if he was still alive. Like who else was involved.'

'It sounds to me as if you think that Ann's death and the deaths of the other people you mentioned — the boyfriend and the police officer — have something to do with these events in her past?'

'I like to take things one step at a time,' I answered carefully. 'At the moment it's only one avenue of inquiry, but it's certainly one that's worth pursuing. Was that the full extent of Ann's allegations, or was there more?'

For a moment Dr Cheney was silent, her eyes boring into mine.

'If there is,' I said, prompting her, 'it's important that I know.'

'Yes,' she said eventually. 'There was more.'

The room suddenly felt very quiet. I wanted a smoke, but I also knew better than to ask in here. There was no way Dr Cheney was a smoker. Sometimes you can just tell.

'I felt, you see, that Ann was holding something back,' she continued. 'But I wasn't sure what it could be. What she'd told me already had been horrifying enough, but somehow it didn't quite fit with the girl I had sitting in front of me. When Ann came to me she had deep-seated emotional problems, and a propensity for extreme violence towards those whom she believed had done her wrong, and during our sessions it became increasingly clear that there was violence in her past, something she'd experienced that wasn't explained by what she'd told me already. That acted as the catalyst for her finally leaving her home and father. After all, she'd been used to the treatment she was receiving; she saw it as normal. I therefore became convinced that something else had happened, something that she desperately wanted to repress because it was simply too traumatic. We had a number of sessions together, and slowly, and as gently as I could, I finally extracted from her what it was.'

Again, silence filled the room. This time I made no prompt. I waited. I knew she'd tell me.

She cleared her throat. 'Because Ann repeated these allegations to the police, and because I believed what she said and would like something done about it, if indeed after all this time it's still possible, I will tell you. But only because of that. According to what Ann told me, the reason she left was because she witnessed a murder.'

I tensed, my mouth feeling dry. 'Whose?'

'A young girl's.'

I exhaled more loudly than I'd expected, remembering Blacklip back in that hotel room. Requesting a little girl to kill.

'What happened?'

'The "parties" that Ann was forced to attend by her father became, she said, progressively nastier. The participants started to be much rougher with her than they had been originally. A new participant also became involved, a man who always wore a black leather mask and whom the others tended to defer to. This man was apparently the most violent of them all. Also, for the first time, other young girls were present. She remembered two being there who were slightly older — twelve or thirteen — although she didn't recognize them.'

Dr Cheney stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. 'Later, at another party at which Ann said there were five men including her father present, there was also another girl there, about the same age as Ann. Again, Ann didn't recognize her, but she remembered that the girl was in great distress. She was sobbing and begging her tormentors to stop, but, according to Ann, this simply served to spur them on even more. The violence got more and more out of hand. They started hitting her as they had sex with her, and the abuser with the black mask produced a knife and held it to her throat while she was forced to commit certain acts with him.' Her voice, which up until that point had been dispassionate, cracked a little. 'Ann remembers the girl choking and the man in the black mask cutting her face with the knife, and then someone — she couldn't remember who — ushered her — Ann — out and locked her in an adjoining room. She was made to sit there in darkness for an indeterminate period of time, hearing the muffled and desperate screams of the other girl, until finally they stopped altogether.

'Some time after that, her father came for her. By now he was fully dressed, but Ann said that he looked tired and had several blood spots on his neck. He told her to forget what she'd seen, then led her out of the house, but as they were going past the room where the assault had taken place, the door opened and she saw inside for a few seconds. There were two men on the sofa, both still naked, their masks now removed. They turned away as soon as they saw her and she didn't get much of a look at them because it was what was on the floor that caught her attention. There was a large sack tied at one end, which, by the way it was stretched, looked as if it contained a body. There were several large bloodstains showing through and no sign of the other girl. Whoever had opened the door then shut it very quickly, and Ann said her father became agitated and hurried her out, telling her once again to forget what she'd seen, because if she ever repeated it, the man in the black mask would come back for her. She was eleven years old at the time, Mr Kane. She believed him.'

'And you believed her? I'm not suggesting that she made it up, but if she was truly keen to see her father suffer, is it not possible that she could have told you this just to make sure?'

'I don't think so. She never wanted her father prosecuted; she just wanted to be left alone so that she could forget the whole thing. However, I advised her to tell the police, because I was concerned about what Richard Blacklip might still be doing. Also, I knew that it would help her case if she allowed me to tell the court about what had come out in our sessions, particularly if she was then seen to be co-operating with the police in building a case against him.'

'But the police never followed it up? About the murder, I mean?'

'Not at the time, no. They said they'd looked into it, but without a body, a location for the crime, any other corroborating witnesses or even an exact date, there wasn't a great deal they could do. Obviously they questioned Blacklip, but he denied all knowledge of such a thing. In fact, he denied everything and claimed he was a doting father, but a search of the house uncovered pornographic material involving young children, and further investigation revealed that he'd had these other convictions in the past. And now, of course, he can't be questioned any further.'

'Did Ann give you a description of this girl?'

Dr Cheney gave a little shake of her head. 'Only that she was about her own age, and that she had shortish brown hair.'

I wrote this down in my notebook. 'Have you heard from the police recently?'

She nodded, finishing her coffee. I hadn't touched mine. 'Yes. I had a visit from a policeman a few weeks ago, not long after the shootings you're investigating.'

I was surprised that Dr Cheney hadn't mentioned this earlier. 'Really? About Ann? What did he want to know?'

'He asked similar questions to you. He wanted to know the specifics of Ann's claims. I explained to him that I'd told the police everything at the time, but they'd chosen to do nothing. He apologized and said he was from the murder investigation…'

'The one into the deaths of Asif Malik and Jason Khan?'

'That's right. He said he hadn't been a part of the original inquiry into Ann's claims, and asked me to repeat everything. So I did.'